The Agricultural Water Management Solutions Project (AWM
Solutions) has identified a variety of small-holder agricultural
water management interventions (AWM Regional Mapping ) that have a high
potential to improve the food security and livelihoods of the
rural poor in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. The study
results have now been made available online through the
Investment Visualizer tool. This tool is directed at policymakers
and investors in agricultural water management in sub-Saharan
Africa and South Asia to assess the profits, costs, yield
improvements, number of (poor) people reached, area expansion,
and water use consumption of various smallholder water management
options by country and region. Uptake of any of these
agricultural water management investments will require capacity
building, and locale-specific further assessment. Knowledge
intensity and locale-specific further assessments vary by
intervention and are largest for small reservoirs and lowest for
in situ water harvesting. The analysis underlying the scenarios
is based on an integrated modeling system that combines
geographic (GIS) data analysis, biophysical and economic
predictive modeling, and crop mix optimization tools to assess
the regional potential for smallholder agricultural water
management across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

An ex-ante GIS analysis uses a set of suitability criteria
to identify areas where the technology could potentially be
applied, pixel by pixel, across the region based on environmental
suitability and labor availability. The results are then further
refined through the application of two biophysical and economic
predictive modeling tools: the Soil and Water Assessment Tool
(SWAT) and the model of Dynamic Research Evaluation for
Management (DREAM) for a combined agronomic-economic-hydrologic
cost-benefit analysis for each crop and technology assessed.
Given limited market access in much of sub-Saharan Africa, we
simulate local, national and international crop markets for this
region, for vegetable, root and cereal crops, respectively.

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REGION:

SUBREGION/COUNTRY:

SELECTIONS SUMMARY:

TECHNOLOGY:

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CLIMATE:

To investigate the impacts of
climate change on the expansion potential of agricultural water
management strategies, results were estimated under three climate
scenarios. The baseline climate reflects actual 2000-2010
climate. Two alternative scenarios represent the "driest" and
"wettest" scenarios among 12 future climate change scenarios for
2050 projected by general circulation models for each region. In
sub-Saharan Africa, these models were the CSIRO-Mk3.0 model and
the CNRM-CM3 model; while in South Asia, the CSIRO-Mk3.0 model
and the MIROC 3.2 (medium resolution) model results represent the
driest and wettest outcomes, respectively. The CSIRO and CNRM
models were run under the SRES A2 emissions scenario, which is
considered moderate. The MIROC model was run using the SRES A1B
emissions scenario to reflect the wettest outcome for the region

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AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY PRICE:

Communal river diversion To account for the effects of price
changes on the economic profitability of irrigation development,
the implications of a 30 percent increase and a 30 percent
decrease in initial crop prices on the potential expansion of
agricultural water management technologies was assessed. The
baseline prices are average 2007-2009 crop prices by country
derived from agricultural price statistics in FAOSTAT, which
initialized the simulation modeling.

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AWM COSTS:

The analysis includes crop-level production costs (for capital
investment and operation) for each agricultural water management
intervention. Given that the cost-benefit results are very
sensitive to these cost assumptions two additional cost scenarios
are considered. The first assumes that agricultural water
management costs increase by 50 percent and the second assumes a
50 percent decrease in these costs. Baseline irrigation costs
were estimated by the AWM team from case studies. Other
production costs were derived from various household survey data
sets.